tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-249705572024-03-14T19:35:07.310+05:30My Daughters' MumMother, woman, lover, daughter, myself: the whole is greater than the sum of its partsNatashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.comBlogger230125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-77595267519844461962018-12-04T11:34:00.000+05:302018-12-04T11:34:40.872+05:30IMMORTAL FOR A MOMENT : New Book Announcement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have worked hard and compelled myself to read and re-read what I write and create a second book this year... and this is what it is called:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.in/Immortal-Moment-Answer-Questions-Letting/dp/9386797283/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543473508&sr=8-1&keywords=immortal+for+a+moment&fbclid=IwAR1_izDAM4nADmWrM_kXlBoM-VoKOrq_DrMP-Arc3tISJDho_bTNhdvHEfc">IMMORTAL FOR A MOMENT<br />Small answers to big questions about life, love and letting go</a><br /><br />I'm proud and I am scared. Proud that it is done and looks good. Scared because it is still a week away from being released and it feels safer to feel trepidation about reader response than to feel overconfident.<br />Just a minor case of stage fright, I suppose.<br /><br />Meanwhile, my friend and champion Aparna Roy, the ace editor and intuitive storyteller has created this short video from moments from last year's book launch of My Daughters' Mum.<br /><br /><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e4LT-uUoj10" width="560"></iframe></span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-81138840880664583472017-09-10T14:34:00.001+05:302017-09-10T15:01:22.586+05:30Natasha Badhwar’s Sexy Saturday Songs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Break-ups can be so sexy. So many of us realize what our love relationship has been all about only when it is time to break-up. We crash into nothingness and discover how many books, movies and web series we have been neglecting all along. We find the time to attend to our toe-nails and other friends.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Some lovers never discover their feelings or how to express them till their relationship reaches the point when the other is ready to say, “No, thank you, I must leave now.” The departing lover often gets his/her first dose of real attention from the other at this time.<br /></span></span><b style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify; word-spacing: 0.2em;">1) </b><strong style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="word-spacing: 0.2em;">KUCH NA KAHO</span><span style="word-spacing: 3.2px;"><br /></span></strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">The break-up of my first romance was almost scripted into our relationship from its very beginning. First year of college coinciding with a first love and the first year of post-graduation coinciding with the realization that we had many journeys in us that would take us to destinations that were not going to co-incide. Not now, and perhaps never.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #404040;">At exactly that time, came Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s </span><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">1942, A Love Story</em><span style="color: #404040;"> with Javed Akhtar, R. D. Burman and Lata Mangeshkar collaborating to create </span><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Kuchh na kaho, kuchh bhi na kaho</em><span style="color: #404040;">, a tender break-up song that gave words to my loss. It was a sadness laced with gratitude for what the love had brought with it when it had enveloped and protected us.</span><br /><i><span style="color: #404040;">“Ours dreams fall through the sieve of time. No one else knows what this has meant, there is only you and there is only me. Let this moment stand still here.” </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wqXCw9T9Wu0" width="560"></iframe><br /></i><strong style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;"><br /><br />2) HUMNE DEKHI HAI UN AANKHON KI MAHAKTI KHUSHBOO</strong><span style="color: #404040;"><br />We are a society who have traditionally not given centre space to our love lives. Love remains a 4 letter word, that is often flung at us as an accusation that one must defend oneself from.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;" /><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Humne dekhi hai un aankhon ki mahakti khushboo</em><span style="color: #404040;">, written by Gulzar and sung by Lata Mangeshkar is that gentlest of songs that asks for true love to be let off the hook. It is a song that almost says, never mind the relationship, just let me keep my love as I know it.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;" /><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Pyaar ko pyaar hi rahne do, koi naam na do</em><span style="color: #404040;">.<br /><i>“Love is not words, it is not a voice. It is a silence, that listens as well as speaks…”</i></span></span><br />
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<strong style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">3) TADAP KE TADAP KE IS DIL KI AAH NIKALTI RAHI</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What’s a list that doesn't honour that which is raw and unadulterated and brings with it the familiarity of deeply felt heartache?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Tadap tadap ke is dil ki aah nikalti rahi</em> sung by Vinod Rathor for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam is my all time favourite break-up song because it expresses unashamed passion - letting it all hang out, without restraint. It is the fearless voice of the lover, speaking straight to the creator, bypassing the rest of the world who are but mere bystanders in this dialogue.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />This is an expression that defies the judgement of silence and death. It screams at the sky, embraces rock bottom, lets the tears roll, and remains nattily dressed throughout, even as the lover cries that he has been looted and ruined in love. Kitschy and true.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">"Tadap tadap ke is dil ki aah nikalti rahi<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />mujhko sazaa di pyaar ki aisa kya gunaah kiya<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />ki lut gaye haan lut gaye…hum teri mohobbat mein"</em></span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">4) IK KUDI JIDA NAAM MOHABBAT</strong><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">In other break- up scenarios, we discover to our shock that being by ourselves - dressing up, eating alone, laughing with friends, staying up till our smartphone crashes on our nose - is quite a fantastic love affair in itself. We didn’t know we could define this freedom from despair and independence from uncertainty as love, but by God, it feels like the real thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Ik kudi jida naam mohabbat</em><span style="color: #404040;">, the Punjabi song written by Shiv Kumar Batalvi - resurrected recently in the film, Udta Punjab – is a great song about finding love within ourselves.</span><br /><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Ik Kudi</em><span style="color: #404040;"> speaks to the inner waif in me - the flower girl, the free child who is still in touch with her essential self. One with nature, with the creator, with love itself. Among other things, raising my daughters and watching them play has given me a second chance to know the inner child in me.</span><br /><span style="color: #404040;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I-BHMvcBTOQ" width="560"></iframe></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;"><br />5) KABHI HUM KHUBSURAT THEY </strong><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="color: #404040;">Punjabi and Urdu are the two languages of my grandparents - the languages of the undivided Punjab that both my parents come from. Raising my brothers and me in cities far away from where they grew up, English and Hindi became the only languages that were considered relevant for us. As a young adult, I realized I pined for Urdu and Punjabi and would feel deep connections to poetry and song in these languages even when I didn’t have the vocabulary to express my own self in them.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">Kabhi hum khubsurat they</em><span style="color: #404040;"> sung by Nayyara Noor is a song about rediscovering self-love that makes my soul come alive. It stirs something in deep recesses where stories of my childhood and lost cultural legacies are buried. This is also an intensely visual song. You will see ponds and butterflies and the first light of morning slicing through a courtyard. You will see a mother and a child, and one of them will be you.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="color: #404040;">Listening to this rendition makes me realize how we can receive meaning from songs even when we don’t understand so many words.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><em style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #404040;">"Naye din ki musafat rang main goondi hawa ke saath khirki sai bulaati hai…humain maathay pai bosa do…" “</em><span style="color: #404040;">Give me a kiss on my forehead.”</span><br /><span style="color: #404040;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5HtDfsqsXRo" width="560"></iframe></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Break ups are the most intense time in some relationships. Sometimes we need the shock of loss to bring up all the feelings that we have kept hidden from our own selves.</span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Go ahead, be inspired and break up with your love. I highly recommend it.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #404040; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><u>Here is the entire playlist of songs that will break your heart and then mend it:</u></i></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wqXCw9T9Wu0" width="560"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #404040;"><br /></span><br />This list of sexy Saturday songs was first published on AgentsofIshq.com<br /><a href="http://agentsofishq.com/sss/natasha-badhwars-sexy-saturday-songs/">http://agentsofishq.com/sss/natasha-badhwars-sexy-saturday-songs/</a><br /><br /></span><i style="color: #404040; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Natasha Badhwar is a writer, film-maker and media trainer. She is inordinately fond of break-up songs, especially the one that features shattering chandeliers and Salman Khan in a desert storm. Natasha is the mother of three children who are almost old enough to soon offer us their own list of Sexy Saturday Songs.</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-22354508455067539422017-06-01T22:32:00.000+05:302017-06-03T07:26:14.666+05:30A world in which she will always be loved<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">On the morning that </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Pinki</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">
Mehta died, her 15-year-old grand-daughter Harshita had an admission interview
scheduled with the principal of a new school. Everyone in the family decided
that despite the death, it was important for Harshita to show up. Her
grandmother would have wanted her to go forth and face the world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Pinki</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> Mami was a
very special aunt from my childhood. And now it was time for me to be the aunt
Harshita needed. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Since her grieving parents could not accompany her to school, I met
Harshita in the school building as her guardian. We sent a message to the
principal that the child’s grandmother had died just an hour ago. She called us
in and spoke to Harshita in a gentle voice.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“What is the one thing that comes to your mind when you think of your
grandmother?” asked Mrs Banerjee, the school principal.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Music,” said Harshita, with a smile. “Songs from old Hindi films.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“I already feel like I know your grandmother a little,” said Mrs
Banerjee.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I already felt that we had begun to find ways to keep Pinki Mami alive for ourselves.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have wanted to write Pinki Mami’s story for years now. I once narrated
my version of her life to a friend
who is a writer, and told her to write it. My friend turned to me with a
question on her face—Why won’t you tell this story yourself? <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Pinki</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> Mami wasn’t
even ill at the time. She was fine. I wasn’t meeting her much but I was
thinking of her a lot. I have this somewhat
irrational trait of not needing to socialize with those I love deeply.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Pinki</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> Mami was my
youngest aunt. She was the first bride in my life as a little girl and I never
quite got over my awe for her. She was young, she was beautiful and she was
vulnerable. She had been married too young into a large, chaotic joint family. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveq5ul-NKGTwsf1BjCr5_PRdUEkPSZxaBarygEGgVfjB4ZIT2LyAGtob7ERFP89_ieAOWwCqzqDqd6HhHC_n7ZD-DI2MZNm624X6UNdGXPFCznTkpzUq0prDteUoFYYrqDso/s1600/image1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1079" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiveq5ul-NKGTwsf1BjCr5_PRdUEkPSZxaBarygEGgVfjB4ZIT2LyAGtob7ERFP89_ieAOWwCqzqDqd6HhHC_n7ZD-DI2MZNm624X6UNdGXPFCznTkpzUq0prDteUoFYYrqDso/s400/image1.jpg" width="268" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When we visited my mother’s parental home in our summer holidays,
everyone would dote on my brothers and me. We were a standard-issue
dysfunctional Punjabi family, still trying to settle down and find home after
being uprooted from Lahore by the partition of India. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Love and abuse, respect and neglect, nourishment and deprivation,
sharing and silence—everything was always happening simultaneously and very
loudly around us. Yes, even the silence on things-that-must-not-be-said was
loud.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I must have been four years old when Pinki Mami asked me the question to which I gave the wrong answer.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Do you love me, Neeru?” she asked me. She must have been 20 years old. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“No, I don’t,” I said to her, attempting to be accurate about who I
loved and who I liked in my little life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“You don’t love me?” she said. “Neeru, did you say no? You don’t love
your Mami?” </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">She was stung. She looked shocked. I felt trapped. I wanted to reverse
my answer instantly, but I didn’t know how to. I hadn’t yet learnt that
accurate answers are not always the right answers.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Despite this
awkwardness,</span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> or perhaps because of it, I felt a bond with Pinki Mami that stayed with me. Partly because of the intense guilt
and helplessness I felt, and partly because I had been witness to the secret
pain of a grown-up that should have been the responsibility of other adults in
the room. She was a lost child in that moment. I wanted to protect her.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Pinki Mami grew up and became the mother of two children. Her son,
Mohit, and daughter, Pooja, grew up, fell in love, got married and have two
children each of their own. In the middle of the last four decades, Pinki
Mami’s husband, my mother’s youngest brother, died suddenly in his early 40s.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I was sitting next to Harshita during her school admission
interview, I also had an answer to what comes to mind when I think of the woman
who had died of cancer that morning. In that home we used to visit as children,
Pinki Mami’s personal life revealed itself in her dressing room. Piles of
well-read film magazines, her cassette player and a woman’s deferred
dreams—this was a woman waiting to seize her own time and space.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Like a heroine in a novel, Pinki Mami nurtured her dreams safely, biding her time till she was ready to
step out of her room and breathe deeply in the world her extraordinarily
high-achieving children had created outside the home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As we were driving to her cremation, I asked her son-in-law, Deepak,
what she had been like with him. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“She was my friend,” he said, suddenly looking upwards to try to push
back his tears. “I can’t deal with relatives,” he said. “It has to be a
friendship if a relationship is going to be genuine.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is easy to imagine Pinki Mami as a friend. The last time I met her in
her hospital bed, she was too weak to make plans any more. Yet her youthfulness
was there in her spirit. Her two children were
next to her, being attentive and loving. Ultimately her deepest, greatest
relationships were those that she shared with her children, their spouses and
her grandchildren. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“This is my time,” she would say to her daughter-in-law, Archana. “The
best time of my life.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">As she lay in bed, ravaged by cancer, the person I saw was still the
beauty queen I had admired as a child. There was no bitterness. Pinki Mami had
held on to hope, she had summoned all the talent and courage she had, and with
the power of her own will, she had created a world in which she would always be
loved. A world in which she was free. It had </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">become imperative to tell her story now.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">Sometimes, this is what happens to dreams deferred—they survive beyond
time like indestructible seeds, waiting for the right time to take root and
sprout—growing into a tree that will bring succour to many.</span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span>
<br /><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">This post was first published in Mint Lounge on 3rd June, 2017 and is online on Livemint.com here: </span></i></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/FuA28osW6OIcPzMVgg3OhN/A-place-of-her-own.html">A Place of her Own</a> </i></span></span></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-3847327366039935132017-02-24T04:50:00.004+05:302017-02-24T05:30:30.346+05:305 things I do only because my daughters are watching me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Things I do because the my daughters are watching me is becoming a very strong narrative in my life.<br /><br />I have always known it technically, but lived experience makes me increasingly aware of the invisible yet inevitable impact of my behaviour on my children. Sometimes it can feel like a really heavy weight to carry, but often awareness dawns and I realize that I can toss the ball towards the sky, run and catch it as it returns, and basically make a game of it. More people will join in when I look like I am having too much fun all by myself.</span></div>
<div class="orangeXh" id="U20229428702IJ" style="margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Gossip like an old crone</span></b></div>
<div id="U20229428702UDB" style="margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I tell my children stories about everyone in the family. One by one I shall narrate them all. I’ve even got some of them lined up on a timeline for age-appropriateness. I will tell them about elopements and adoptions, about divorces and separations. I will tell them about heartbreak and recovery, about depression, addictions and suicide. About being uprooted and of healing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My daughters and I will look at, fumble with, search for and feel around our own life stories and personal histories. You can call it gossip, because we do enjoy these conversations very much. We shall banish shame and taboos from our own discourse. We shall celebrate survival as if it is a miracle.</span></div>
<div class="orangeXh" id="U20229428702u9B" style="margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Talk to strangers</span></b></div>
<div id="U20229428702jRG" style="margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I was not very good at this as a younger woman. I was wary and shy and it took very little to make me feel threatened and act aggressive. The mere presence of children in my entourage changes the dynamics of communication between the world and me. People reach out and talk to or about the children. I have learnt to ask for help. I have learnt to recognize that I need help and that doesn’t make me a lesser person.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1s7mH3-SoiPYmd7-JqtScslaRnk6TFOVSfZyFmDjQdFHkILQaR6Sdj8j2uon24M0hOOZSXyWIw_6UM_0VMFnGz0nwpfA6NWwdHoVzLCGF7FnJohkcSxc7t5e8hhyotgUZDFQ/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1s7mH3-SoiPYmd7-JqtScslaRnk6TFOVSfZyFmDjQdFHkILQaR6Sdj8j2uon24M0hOOZSXyWIw_6UM_0VMFnGz0nwpfA6NWwdHoVzLCGF7FnJohkcSxc7t5e8hhyotgUZDFQ/s400/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Because the children are watching, I am inspired to stay in control and keep calm, even when I don’t know what is coming next. This has made me chatty and relaxed. I talk to strangers in the Metro, malls, libraries, restaurants and public toilets as if I have known them for a long time. I need to demonstrate authority to my daughters. The world is not our enemy, it responds to friendliness. We are not helpless pawns, we influence situations with our own aura and power. I’m a woman, you are little women and we have tools that enable our happiness, safety and well-being.</span></div>
<div class="orangeXh" id="U20229428702aT" style="margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Act like a complete clown</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At home, I talk gibberish, I dance like a toy whose limbs are loose from the joints and I cry like a circus clown when I can’t find the last piece of cake that I thought was waiting for me. I want to exist outside my well-behaved body, I want to hear sounds that are not subdued, I want to express more than what is allowed in the cage of social propriety. This is my definition of being at home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I am surprised at how homeless I can feel unexpectedly, I recognize it in other women and I don’t want to pass it on to my daughters.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXL28occbqCBGyg6ogzDf7jqztyv_5MdcjIPG0E_unmZ1nDdRjEZiI4IcIoRhTlKpn4hyVsjcoyIGwswOMb7tSnKBA8cBT9TrhvJWmdejgTzR-otba_u34xw1y9GphstE9AsI/s1600/IMG_0535.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Times; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXL28occbqCBGyg6ogzDf7jqztyv_5MdcjIPG0E_unmZ1nDdRjEZiI4IcIoRhTlKpn4hyVsjcoyIGwswOMb7tSnKBA8cBT9TrhvJWmdejgTzR-otba_u34xw1y9GphstE9AsI/s320/IMG_0535.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“You are so funny, Mamma,” says my eldest child, and that’s all I have ever needed to hear. I tried all this tentatively, not really expecting a very hospitable response, but years of persisting has clearly made me a better clown than I used to be. I want to raise daughters unafraid of being funny.</span></div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Fight with their father</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“What’s the matter with you,” my husband texted me long after we had walked out of an argument.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“I was fighting with you because the children were watching,” I texted back. Then I picked up the phone and just called him. “Babu, I have to confront you when they watch us having an argument,” I said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“I thought we are supposed to tone it down in their presence?” he said referring to a previous discussion we have had about the inevitable differences of opinion between us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“How do you want your daughters to behave when they are confronted with an entitled brat of a boy making a stupid argument?” I asked him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“I want them to demolish him,” he said, which is milder than the words he usually uses when he imagines his daughters and young men in the future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Well, then they have to see their mother do that, so that they know that it is normal behaviour. If I keep backing off from flare-ups for the sake of temporary peace or because I am scared of raised voices and accusations, then that’s what your daughters will also do as adult women,” I said. “Subconscious role-modelling, you see.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’m really serious about this. And therefore I take this really seriously. I fight with my husband to show my children how to speak up for yourself in intimate relationships. How to say what you feel calmly when the other is raising his voice and getting very agitated about whatever is at stake. Sometimes it is as trivial as how the bedcovers must be folded around the bed. Sometimes it is more significant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I would let go of a lot more things between us if I wasn’t acutely aware that our children are watching us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Did you call me an entitled brat of a boy?” my husband came back to me much later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“No way,” I giggled. “I would never ever do that, <i style="outline: 0px;">jaaneman</i>.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“You are such a <i style="outline: 0px;">badmaash</i>,” he said.<br /><br />“Thank you, are you proud of me?” I said.</span></div>
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<b style="outline: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Flirt with my sweetheart</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Mamma, you forgot one more thing you do that makes him very embarrassed,” my daughter reminds me as I discuss this piece with her father and her. “You jump into his lap and kiss him behind his ear.” As expected, her father’s face is turning red.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“But <i style="outline: 0px;">beta</i>, I would do a lot more of that if you guys weren’t watching,” I say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“You are so funny, Mamma,” she says, running off to get ready for school.<br /><br />[<i>This list of confessions was first published in Mint Lounge <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/Pp117L5js9V7KwLhVBoUzJ/Five-things-I-do-only-because-my-daughters-are-watching-me.html" target="_blank">here</a>]</i></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-38010524396594242322016-04-07T15:20:00.003+05:302016-04-07T15:49:29.997+05:30Children are stand-up comics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Friday afternoon.I'm late! said Afzal and rushed out of the house.He's always late, says Aliza, why is he rushing...<br />
Posted by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=24970557#" role="button">Natasha Badhwar</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/natasha.badhwar/posts/10150656472783995">Friday, 6 April 2012</a></blockquote>
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'Dinner first, Naseem,' I say. 'Ice-cream after dinner.''I will write in my article,' she says, 'that Mamma does not let me eat ice-cream.'<br />
Posted by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=24970557#" role="button">Natasha Badhwar</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/natasha.badhwar/posts/10150586486518995">Thursday, 1 March 2012</a></blockquote>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-65917389173442635602016-03-29T06:46:00.000+05:302016-03-30T16:59:55.977+05:305 stages of public speaking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When I am first invited to speak/workshop/speech-ify anywhere by anyone, I usually say yes before the other person has even finished his or her sentence.<br /><br />(I have learnt now to take my time, to delay answering the e-mail, to ask a few questions on the phone...but I know I have agreed way before I give away the fact that I have agreed.)</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoTQJ6m2sjjJKIxWJFqQCkLAqxttYdUj-M6OFJGRMImB_CpgVPRy2tYM1n49cYyK24u1Ej3zNbb6OdjVJkWGb1MBoQntWAxZUO6hA0wTeQYrPYfYNSnj3CR-bnPa4gstcUPQ/s1600/ER1C4842.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaoTQJ6m2sjjJKIxWJFqQCkLAqxttYdUj-M6OFJGRMImB_CpgVPRy2tYM1n49cYyK24u1Ej3zNbb6OdjVJkWGb1MBoQntWAxZUO6hA0wTeQYrPYfYNSnj3CR-bnPa4gstcUPQ/s400/ER1C4842.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />It is a childhood fantasy, as well as an adult fantasy to be on stage with a microphone, talking and smiling. (I should smile less, I tell myself, as I try to learn to be more like others who seem more successful at this sort of thing. Who are more serious-faced and seem to be taken more seriously!)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So here are my 5 stages of public speaking: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">1) Agree immediately. Think of what I will wear.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">2) Do nothing much to prepare. Scribble some notes in my phone, which I will later forget to look at.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">3) Become unable to sleep/eat/talk/socialise just before the event. Feel nauseous, ill, stricken, headache, lose my way to the airport/venue and get late. This is what the descent to hell must feel like...</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDD9TeWiQUYjoBj-wGaoUNh5YZzxHYtisaVzJ8QQ7nbgU69xI4DpeAlS1GkvkqSxX34L_FpV__9YN6Z_cHP_pPrbnOy4FTxst5CTnDyTaj6N4IkwETRm0lH3ozulG7aMu1PXA/s1600/thumb_ER1C4822_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDD9TeWiQUYjoBj-wGaoUNh5YZzxHYtisaVzJ8QQ7nbgU69xI4DpeAlS1GkvkqSxX34L_FpV__9YN6Z_cHP_pPrbnOy4FTxst5CTnDyTaj6N4IkwETRm0lH3ozulG7aMu1PXA/s640/thumb_ER1C4822_1024.jpg" width="640" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">4) Go on stage and smile a lot. Speak and present, pause and listen. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">5) I'm a born-again human being! I can eat a little. I am alive. I am good! Hello world, I made it to the other side. </span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-46999657580468134052016-02-14T11:15:00.001+05:302017-06-03T20:55:29.083+05:30I recommend bigamy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Marriage is destiny so make sure you are married to yourself when you are of marriageable age. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Marriage is destiny. I hate this sentence. I rebel against it. I jump up and down in agitation and want to stomp on it and say, no, no, no... My destiny will be defined by me. Why should it be defined by who one is married to? Or by one's in-laws?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But experience tells me that goddam it, marriage is indeed destiny. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So here is the solution. Be married to yourself. Yes, I recommend bigamy. </span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-82402268469299257792016-02-02T13:06:00.002+05:302016-02-02T13:06:53.332+05:30An Unexpected Rant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Contrary to expectations, I dislike reading parenting columns and books. I don't like them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I find most parenting memoirs, handbooks, guidebooks, advice columns banal and uninteresting. I hate the moral superiority and the barely hidden but unacknowledged anger. I hate how much is unexpressed and how much is glossed over. Most of it sounds to me exactly like the unfriendly gynaecologist, the nosy neighbourhood aunty, the stupid aunts who coo around you with the single-minded intent of breaking your confidence and fanning your worst fears.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I like to find out things for myself. Status quo makes me angry. I hate it when people say, 'its all right it will all get sorted in the end...' as a way to calm you down without allowing you to challenge or change any unjust power equation. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I only like to read about vulnerability. I like to read about impotent anger. I like stories of loss and reconciliation. I like stories that promise to start when they seem to end.</span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-628199715764528872016-01-12T09:12:00.000+05:302016-03-29T08:53:25.434+05:30Boring relatives are boring<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have an astoundingly large number of stupid people in my life. Its the reason I appear so calm.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I can stay calm or I can auto-combust. Most of the time I choose calm. Sometimes I write.<br /><br />"What time did you get back home today," she asks me over the phone from another city. She knows that I have been away today. There are house-guests in my home (from the village) and I was not home to receive the children from school either. My husband handled the home front today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"I reached Noida by 7:30pm in the Metro," I say. "Then Af came and picked me up from there."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"It must be so convenient for you to have the car," she says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Yes, that's true," I say. I have no clue what she means.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Do you have to go tomorrow again?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"No, tomorrow I have to write my column so I will be behind my computer at home."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Hmmm. That's the same as not being home," she says. "If you have to write that means you are not really at home."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In case I had become delusional that she might be interested in my life and work, she clarifies that all she is doing is counting the no. of hours I am <i>"not available" </i>in my primary role as <i>bechari, susheel, pareshan nari</i> whose life must be dedicated to suffering boring guests, husband and children. So that I can be a bonafide card-carrying member of the<i> bechari, susheel, pareshan naris </i>of India and <strike>hold meaningful conversations</strike> (exchange sorry notes) with others who are my type of <i>bechari bitches.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hoo haa. This is why I don't use the phone to call family. I don't take calls, I don't return calls, I don't whatsapp-facebook-tweet with the relatives.<br /><br />Cos what to do baby, I got the agency! I'm in love with myself. I'm even in love with her and if she had been my mother, I would have given her an impromptu scolding for the loaded way in which she was framing all her questions. Followed by a big badass hug!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But she ain't my mother, so I expressed my <i>bhadaas</i> right here, right now.</span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-67993218417365233632015-12-21T15:32:00.002+05:302015-12-21T17:39:00.575+05:30An Imposter's Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I had two ideas in my mind for the <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/My%20Daughters'%20Mum" target="_blank">Mint Lounge column</a> this week: One was the story of inconsequential, unknown drivers in the interiors of India who people like me (my FB friends, peers and readers) don't like to think of for longer than 1 minute. We also like to casually suggest that you never know whether they are lying and trying to victimize us poor (rich), soft-hearted (cynical) souls. Sniff. Steer back all our attention and resources to ourselves.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other was a deeply personal story titled: "The difference between Afzal and me" …which is a document of how differently we react when he faces racial profiling, i.e. when he is rejected/insulted/excluded/<wbr></wbr>denied reservations because of his name. It makes him look better than me… but again I worried about a general reader reaction that would go… "of course Muslims must put up with this everyday discrimination because people like us are the real victims… we have to put up with terror…then our news channels’ breathless reaction to terror and whatnot. And all Muslims are terrorists, so please excuse."</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As usual, just when the time comes to actually type the column, I become utterly unconvinced that my thoughts-words-ideas matter to anyone. And I feel cynical about the response and expectations of readers.<br /><br />Jisko kahte hain: I was in the throes of IMPOSTER SYNDROME : <i>Nobody wants to read the nonsense you write, Natasha.</i></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I knew my column was due, then my distraction brain brought to the notice of my writing brain that Sanjukta had not asked for the column this week like she usually does. I sent her an email.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A couple of hours later I remembered that she was on leave. No one else had asked, either. I didn't remember who I was supposed to email… Rudraneil, the Editor in her absence, is not visible on social media and I have no real interaction with Lounge staffers... so I couldn’t remember him.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To type or to sleep? So I began to sleep through the night in fitful instalments… in between which I would check my phone to see whether there was any email. Sanjukta wrote back saying you would co-ordinate… but no mail from Rudraneil.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Finally it was early hours…and I dreamt this dream. An Imposter's Dream.<br /><br />Rudraneil really didn't care for my column… his thoughts are, "now that Sanjukta is not here, I will get rid of this useless piece!"<br /><br />He said to me, “You know the relevance of what you have been writing is now over. You need to reinvent yourself. You should get over yourself.”</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the dream, he took me on a tour of the Lounge office…which was a decrepit, run-down place in the basement of some old building… maybe in Daryaganj, to give me an idea of how little the Lounge office cared for whether I filed my column or not. No one looked up from their desks. I didn't belong here.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He showed me some kind of prize the column had won a couple of years ago. I said, “Really, no one told me.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He said, “See, we don’t care a damn!”</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is what it was: All my deep, inner child-person fears of not belonging, not being valued, not being of any consequence came out and USED him to enact this impromptu theatre in my head.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s really quite funny when I wake up and slap myself a couple of times for playing this macabre game with myself.</span></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-23200116932567918662015-12-15T04:09:00.001+05:302016-02-01T18:45:42.837+05:30Poems of love and loss<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I love my hair.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He loves my face.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You look better with your glasses on, he says. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What is this way of loving my face, I say. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">He takes back my hair behind my ears with both his hands and says,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I love your mind.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiYC841gPzCXnxHRwSES0ApR_R2O6i4p9Yo_qMxGE7okwD-VS95S75ySVykVq0ZFKjpqkMP4NTRLy7Eanzv6LV3AaWUEdakvQWkUOY1gnZGbeCPYqVj-aoe4yNgOUhxN5Vi3Y/s1600/natasha+self+look.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiYC841gPzCXnxHRwSES0ApR_R2O6i4p9Yo_qMxGE7okwD-VS95S75ySVykVq0ZFKjpqkMP4NTRLy7Eanzv6LV3AaWUEdakvQWkUOY1gnZGbeCPYqVj-aoe4yNgOUhxN5Vi3Y/s1600/natasha+self+look.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiYC841gPzCXnxHRwSES0ApR_R2O6i4p9Yo_qMxGE7okwD-VS95S75ySVykVq0ZFKjpqkMP4NTRLy7Eanzv6LV3AaWUEdakvQWkUOY1gnZGbeCPYqVj-aoe4yNgOUhxN5Vi3Y/s320/natasha+self+look.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">His eyes are green.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">***************</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /><br />Inside my mouth is a battleground. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My teeth are fallen soldiers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Injured. Amputees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Guilt is embedded in my molars.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My teeth have PTSD. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">They grind against each other in my sleep.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My dentist is my best friend.</span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-35440731795615286582015-08-16T11:44:00.003+05:302015-08-16T11:44:30.744+05:30HEAVEN IS WHERE THE FRUIT TREES ARE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi loved trees. She talked about them like many of us love and care for our pets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first thing I noticed about Ammi’s home when I began to visit her regularly was how the house faced both ways. There is no back, the home has a front on both sides. On one side we would park the car and enter the home and on the other side we would sit, read, play and eat, facing the garden. It is called a <i>haata</i> and I have not yet found an English word for this garden that is at the back of the house.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi spent her day in the inner courtyard, looking out at the flowers, fruits and birds. Occasionally, a <i>langur </i>would visit and create excitement. There are mango, papaya and pomegranate trees and many flowering shrubs. There are vegetable patches and a fragrant <i>mehndi </i>plant. The tallest and most majestic is a <i>jamun </i>tree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A few days after Ammi, my mother-in-law, died, I went up to her trees to feel her presence. It had been raining and the<i>jamun </i>tree was laden with ripe fruit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We organized the children in the house and got Muzammil to shake the upper branches with a bamboo stick. It rained<i>jamun </i>all around us. It was voluptuous in our mouth. I wrote about the <i>jamun </i>tree. I took photos of it. It was a celebration of life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Later, I was sitting at the dining table with my six-year-old daughter, Naseem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Will you die before me, Mamma? She asked me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, Naseem, I said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Will you be there when I reach heaven?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes, I will.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Will you tell God that I really like <i>jamun</i>?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then he can make sure there is always some <i>jamun </i>for me, she said, putting another one in her mouth.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIqjm_r240IJOFfUBijcVh4rfii_fs9NGaek4NZhxwl-gJhhHc8zhnUncN_j_x7ki1bJTpxSxT9cwLvWz5ZvXhMT_T4MPbxX5JFnOiO1Lnwv2N2Kt9LH3_OicsMXzQvtFvtYw/s1600/thumb_IMG_1043_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIqjm_r240IJOFfUBijcVh4rfii_fs9NGaek4NZhxwl-gJhhHc8zhnUncN_j_x7ki1bJTpxSxT9cwLvWz5ZvXhMT_T4MPbxX5JFnOiO1Lnwv2N2Kt9LH3_OicsMXzQvtFvtYw/s320/thumb_IMG_1043_1024.jpg" width="303" /></a></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">Keep it simple, I said to myself, taking a cue from the child.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;"><br />A friend sent me an email with a photo of a sunflower from her garden in Canada. Sunflowers seem like people to me. Tall, with an expressive face, always commenting on the weather and waving at everyone who passes by.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“You know, sometimes I wonder how people cope with the death of a loved one without a bit of faith in the world after and the power of prayer?” Shazi wrote to me. “Prayer and faith help me in difficult times, in times of sorrow and grief.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I wish I was more religious,” said another friend, Sabrina, whose husband, Steve, died suddenly two years ago. “I can’t bring myself to believe in the afterlife,” she said. “People tell me to imagine him looking out for our son and me. I feel that if Steve can really see us, he must be miserable, because there is nowhere else he’d want to be except with his son.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I listened to them and wondered if I am religious or not. I don’t say prayers. I don’t fast or read religious texts. But I believe. I have faith. I know where it comes from and that’s a long story, but for now, I hold on to my faith.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m thinking of my mother a lot. For years, when she would remember her parents and the homes in which she grew up, I could barely connect with her stories. She needs to remember where she comes from to feel alive in her present.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our 10-year-old daughter, Aliza, went to school for a day after we returned from Ammi’s home and refused to go again. She was not ill. She would wake up agitated and remain like that till we agreed to let her stay at home. After that Aliza would be perfectly fine and well-adjusted for the day. She stayed close to me, sitting in a corner of a 5-hour work meeting one day and accompanying me to shops on another day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the third day, Aliza asked me if I knew why she couldn’t bring herself to go to school. I had a clue. Everything was so normal and routine in school. Aliza was hurting. She needed permission and space to grieve.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We experienced the same thing. When we are in spaces where we can talk about Ammi and her death, we feel better than when we are out there in the world where it doesn’t matter. We seek conversations with people who knew her essential self. There will be a time to move on. We will know when it comes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It was my birthday exactly two weeks after we lost Ammi. I thought I was ready to celebrate and be happy, because I knew she would want us to do that. But it felt very sad to be happy without her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I could have written about so many other topics today. I want to talk about the film, <i>Inside Out</i>. I want to write about <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Sania%20Mirza" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3498db; text-decoration: none;">Sania Mirza</a></span> and <span class="person"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Search/Link/Keyword/Serena%20Williams" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3498db; text-decoration: none;">Serena Williams</a></span>. In this space, however, I could not bring myself to pretend that this is not foremost on my mind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[This was first published here: <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/j0qS6ra7CarKpNAI3X6wGP/Heaven-is-where-the-fruit-trees-are.html">http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/j0qS6ra7CarKpNAI3X6wGP/Heaven-is-where-the-fruit-trees-are.html</a> ]</span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-59135815672317755442015-08-16T11:26:00.003+05:302015-08-16T11:26:42.891+05:30Ammi : the feminist and romantic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As soon as our plane landed in Varanasi, the first thing to do was to switch on our phones and call Ammi. Ammi, we have landed. Mothers hate it when they dial you and your phone is switched off. It triggers a black hole of anxiety in them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We stopped for dinner on the highway instead of driving straight to our village because she would have called us many times and told us to eat. Take a break and get fresh. Make sure the children eat something they like.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We noted what we ate because she would have asked us in detail what we had eaten. Mothers always want to know what you have eaten.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I’m glad you ate, but the food must have been terrible,” she would say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“No, Ammi, it was quite all right,” I would say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“How can it be? Do you know how they keep their kitchens?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“The <i>bhindi ki sabzi </i>was quite nice actually. It looked like a clean place, Ammi.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“A <i>dhaba </i>on the highway?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“They can be pretty decent, Ammi. You only asked us to eat on the way.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“That’s how you pick up stomach bugs when you visit.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Ammi, last time I got a stomach infection after the big feast in the <i>haveli</i> in Ghazipur…”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Agree with your mother-in-law,” Father Os had said to me in one of his group therapy sessions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Just agree with whatever she says.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“How can I do that, Father Os? She says contrary things.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Just agree with her,” he had said to me. “Try it. You won’t cease to exist.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“How was the food?” Ammi would ask.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“It was quite all right, Ammi.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“It must have been terrible.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Yes actually, the <i>rotis </i>were like cold leather and the <i>bhindi</i>was dripping with oil.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What did you expect? It can’t be like home food.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“That’s true.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“They do the best they can.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“True, Ammi.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“You are too delicate.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“That’s true.” I would smile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“You can get a stomach bug from eating at home too.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“That’s also true. Last time I did!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I’m glad you ate and I am glad you are home.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi will laugh. The smallest things made Ammi laugh. Like me unexpectedly agreeing with her. Like the sight of a baby. Anyone’s baby.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the way to the airport, I had turned to my children and said, “Ammi was one of the nicest mothers ever.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They nodded solemnly.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk93ZOjR61tcQXHX7VvXGQzbF7c3TNL6F8gzu8tmPoVpYGTs707TOEm2KprXPfLd2wgG0G-9uwRcblJlg1_ted-4QQvgg6-ApzvIewB-fnCMnRDkaNcYf2ci8J2JQeRuUdiP0/s1600/IMG_8198_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk93ZOjR61tcQXHX7VvXGQzbF7c3TNL6F8gzu8tmPoVpYGTs707TOEm2KprXPfLd2wgG0G-9uwRcblJlg1_ted-4QQvgg6-ApzvIewB-fnCMnRDkaNcYf2ci8J2JQeRuUdiP0/s320/IMG_8198_1024.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Your father is a very lucky man. And we are very lucky too.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just that morning, I had read Sohaila Abdulali’s column in<i>Mint Lounge</i>, in which she remembered that it had been almost six years since her father had died. Six years of being a person with a dead father. She called it good grief, the bittersweet memories of the good times they had had together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I went up to Afzal and read the article out aloud to him. He held back tears as he listened. We are all preparing ourselves for the inevitability of the death of our parents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He called his mother right after I put down the newspaper. She said she was feeling drowsy. She wanted to reduce the medication she was on. Three hours later, Afzal’s sister called and told him that Ammi had fallen asleep and passed on in her sleep. Their mother was dead. Our Ammi was no more.</span></div>
<div id="U210103300961413D" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He handed his phone to me and asked me to take his calls. He went up to his room to pray.</span></div>
<div id="U2101033009614tgF" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Tell all my friends to call me a week later.”</span></div>
<div id="U2101033009614tOC" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I called my mother. I texted my brothers. Our children were having lunch. They got up and started crying spontaneously. I held them close.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“You are Piku,” I had said to Afzal after we had recently watched the Shoojit Sircar movie starring Deepika Padukone as Amitabh Bachchan’s daughter. “You are always driving cross country with or for your parents. And discussing their ablutions.”</span></div>
<div id="U2101033009614pKE" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I stepped forward and held Ammi’s hand when her body was being prepared for burial. It was as soft as usual. She had asked Noorie to create a <i>mehndi </i>pattern on her palm two days ago. She hadn’t done that for years. The dark beauty of the <i>henna </i>design was startling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi’s small hands, white with blue veins, balancing a large papaya or watermelon as she sliced it neatly at the breakfast table. Why do we remember our parents’ hands so much? The hands that had held us when we were babies. Balancing our bottom in their palm as we grow into independence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Your daughter-in-law seems like she is your daughter. No one can tell that there is a new <i>bahu</i> in this house.” It was meant to be a taunt.</span></div>
<div id="U21010330096142XF" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“That sounds like a nice thing,” Ammi answered. She repeated it to me later. “People say that my daughter-in-law doesn’t behave like a <i>bahu<b>, </b></i>and I tell them that’s how I want it. This is your home. Everything here belongs to you now.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here I am behaving like a daughter all over again. I am sitting on her bed typing into my phone while others handle the logisti</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">cs outside.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Your mother is a feminist,” I often say to Afzal. “You don’t know anything about your mother.” He used to fear that there would be nothing common between his mother and me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi negotiated complex patriarchal systems every day. And she ruled. Ammi was not afraid to be unpopular. She took charge and got things done. She spoke her mind fearlessly, sometimes sounding very harsh. She loved openly and with confidence. Ammi was a romantic. She recognized love when she saw it. She enabled her son and me to make our marriage work. “There’s no way you and I would have survived together on our own,” I tell Afzal.<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowTX0VU_n8cZzqWR6ePDba-vBd9tnJliMJXVRsO4Mci1US5P_ztvd1-ilrJW8j-m_EDAv4A5nD5eZxhZQOhypDpO1YAHC1C9IpAPgut-bpvyHFX8Y2Bdv2KjbpoB560BYCYs/s1600/thumb_IMG_7240_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowTX0VU_n8cZzqWR6ePDba-vBd9tnJliMJXVRsO4Mci1US5P_ztvd1-ilrJW8j-m_EDAv4A5nD5eZxhZQOhypDpO1YAHC1C9IpAPgut-bpvyHFX8Y2Bdv2KjbpoB560BYCYs/s320/thumb_IMG_7240_1024.jpg" width="239" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5bkgCwqvixAgrmuMjPBMkszGes1f_pvbKDssFChdGem4hYds_MZbrPf1fvxyEskkXLVwvdpMmlRt1IUyhjHHv1UHErOF7F39oZ_n-cKoQnnoZBcg9Er86XbE-8aq_40nmic/s1600/thumb_IMG_7243_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5bkgCwqvixAgrmuMjPBMkszGes1f_pvbKDssFChdGem4hYds_MZbrPf1fvxyEskkXLVwvdpMmlRt1IUyhjHHv1UHErOF7F39oZ_n-cKoQnnoZBcg9Er86XbE-8aq_40nmic/s320/thumb_IMG_7243_1024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She would have given me a copy of the Quran in English to read with everyone else right now. I don’t know where she keeps it. I don’t even need it this time. Writing about her is my prayer. It soothes me. It keeps her alive for me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She would also have sent me a glass of chocolate milk. She was alert to everyone’s needs. How do mothers do that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We ache to belong to places. It is always people who make us belong. When those people are gone, the place doesn’t recognize us any more. We have to build relationships from scratch again. Ammi and I both love the same man. This is our solidarity. Her family is my family.</span></div>
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<div id="U21010330096146NI" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; widows: 1;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxcgLbKoarcNVb0NlCUyk_3l-Xay4GL4x7hC0B2CIoechGn53iStt28VGC0CGxxQ6oNhQl6QSzx5Vv7rVr6vI892UJqRB6t_aq7B1PQJBnveRQOXdX2B_ECwp3ZVegsNwF8uQ/s1600/thumb_IMG_2525_1024+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; clear: left; color: black; float: left; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxcgLbKoarcNVb0NlCUyk_3l-Xay4GL4x7hC0B2CIoechGn53iStt28VGC0CGxxQ6oNhQl6QSzx5Vv7rVr6vI892UJqRB6t_aq7B1PQJBnveRQOXdX2B_ECwp3ZVegsNwF8uQ/s320/thumb_IMG_2525_1024+2.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 25.6000003814697px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Ammi was the home I was trying to give my children. She is the roots, the spring-well we come to replenish ourselves at.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />[This was first published here: </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 25.6000003814697px;"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/v2IyEQ80XVHM6UuNWp9MzH/Ammi-the-feminist-and-romantic.html">http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/v2IyEQ80XVHM6UuNWp9MzH/Ammi-the-feminist-and-romantic.html</a></span></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-90556989655371386432015-08-16T09:03:00.003+05:302015-09-10T09:18:38.238+05:30Ammi is no more<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My Ammi passed away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My mother tells me that Ammi had the ideal death. Mummy's sister died when she was in her early 20s. Her father died in his 50s, battling with addiction. Her mother, my Nani died ill and heart-broken. My Dadi died, exhausted and sad.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ammi received her daughter and grandchild in her home at Adilabad in the morning that day. She supervised breakfast and gave directions for what was to be cooked for lunch. She made place for her daughter's luggage to be kept neatly.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4A-b5_GeHkKxTnO2RhF8R_gQHImV0w9QQmwZRlv74ABxcIJS2dZO8ihmpPjezw8KblZAJSRBtVL8a3JFXjf2zgo50eDYxXmbge2KOSBl9PbVG6x3awZraIbfvSIDMVfromrQ/s1600/thumb_IMG_6396_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4A-b5_GeHkKxTnO2RhF8R_gQHImV0w9QQmwZRlv74ABxcIJS2dZO8ihmpPjezw8KblZAJSRBtVL8a3JFXjf2zgo50eDYxXmbge2KOSBl9PbVG6x3awZraIbfvSIDMVfromrQ/s640/thumb_IMG_6396_1024.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Her son called her from Delhi and they chatted. Her other daughters also spoke to her on the phone. She lay down on her bed for a mid-morning rest. Her daughter was resting next to her. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Ammi fell asleep. When someone came to wake her up for lunch time, she didn't wake up. Ammi had passed on.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I saw Ammi lying on ice slabs when we reached Adilabad. I saw her being washed, cleaned, dressed...ready to be buried. She was peaceful. Beautiful and kind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My mother tells me that Ammi had the ideal death. </span><br />
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-11170624786131209162015-05-08T23:39:00.002+05:302015-08-17T14:02:05.950+05:30Say Goodbye to Success<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">This was a morning in my life in June, 2015<br /><br />4:00am: Write column for M</span><span class="il" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">int Lounge</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Naseem is up by 5am. She takes photos of me as I type</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Make Ochre Sky saree collages in Picasa</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Upload on FB page (bad timing)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">7:00am Wake up kids for school</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">7:20am Send column to Lounge</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Send copies of column to brothers for approval<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">8:00am Send kids to school after helping Aliza write a poem on the glory of a summer morning </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sahar takes her meds. Naseem eats cucumber</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Return to whatsapp chat with Bhai about column and zindagi</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Make PPT. for IIMC presentation. A success story of RTE implementation in UP </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />Kanta arrives at home<br />Ashok arrives</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Send saree photos to Atiya </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Eat mango and drink tea for breakfast </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read my Hamirpur notes for IIMC presentation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Receive payment from Sneha ochre sky customer in bank account. Send her message</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Send mail to Lounge editor about image for column</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Get ready. Saree bindi lipstick comb my hair</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Deal with hostile customer who won't pay </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Get book deal offer on FB Messenger</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Answer politely </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Get call from IIMC confirming talk</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Get crank call from slimy man telling me my ATM cards have been cancelled by the govt of India and I need to verify my details again</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Hang up on him</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Send screenshots to Shikha about pixelation crisis in the film we are editing for Oxfam</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Leave home</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Call mom from car</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Call Shikha to co-ordinate about changes in film</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Call IIMC to tell them I am late</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's 10:45am</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Traffic at Shaheen Bagh</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I need to sleep. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Left home without taking saree selfie. But earrings are nice</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Forgot to wear large blue ring</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Carrying 2 paranthas and mango to eat breakfast in car</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also a towel to wipe hands afterwards</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Did not pick up call from unknown number for fear of slimy ATM fraud guy</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Car is in reserve</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Need to stop for petrol</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Afzal did not receive my call</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Must be in court. Allahabad </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Afzal called back</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reassured me that the crazy caller was a hoax. I gloated that I had seen through him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Went to sleep</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ran to Shikha in Alakananda to give her the hard drives to fix the glitches in the edit of film </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More traffic</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Reached IIMC<br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Screened film and discussion</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Superb audience with Indian Information Officers </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Went to Shikha's home to fix Oxfam films</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am hungry for lunch</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3:00pm Left Shikha to pick up children from school </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Spoke to Afzal on way. He is on a bus from Allahabad to Benaras. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">4:00pm Reached school to receive kids </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How come you manage to do so many things, he asked me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't put myself in a box, I said. And I politely said goodbye to success a long time ago. </span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-62424080153718982002015-04-23T17:46:00.000+05:302015-09-10T13:13:15.691+05:30The Zamindar's grandson and his wife<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zamindar's grandson is on a train.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He knows where the broad gauge changes to a metre gauge.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He is rescuing so many people at one time he gets confused between them.<br />He gets angry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He is in transit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zamindar's grand-daughter-in-law was a child in a small town.<br />She is a big city girl.<br />She grows small plants in old bottles.<br />She misses him very much.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zamindar's grandson is his mother's son.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He is deeply secure inside him.<br />He is rich and he smiles widely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />The Zamindar's granddaughter-in-law gets abandonment anxiety.<br />She wakes up at 2 am every night.<br />She checks the notifications on her phone. <br />She checks on the children in their beds.<br />She puts off the lights sometimes.<br />Her mother is an insomniac.<br /><br />The Zamindar's grandson has planted trees around his home.<br />He has built a home for his family.<br />He builds homes for everyone.<br />He knows where home is.<br />He is always travelling between his homes.<br />He is welcome everywhere.<br /><br />The Zamindar's granddaughter-in-law can barely stay at home.<br />She is at home when she is travelling.<br />She does not like arriving.<br />She is learning to reach home.<br />She has a meltdown when she gets home.<br />Nothing has changed because the clutter is inside her.<br /><br />The Zamindar's granddaughter-in-law has gone to receive her husband.<br />He is on his way back home from home.<br />They argue a lot.<br />They are getting better at arguing.<br />The Zamindar's grandson loves his wife.<br />There is a reason they are together.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zamindar's granddaughter-in-law has a camera <br />And a twitter account.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Zamindar's grandson has unexplained body ache.<br />He forgets to take his medicines.<br />He gets angry with his wife when she falls ill.<br />His anger amuses her.<br />You want to say, "I love you," she says to him.<br />"Be an adult," he says to her.<br /><br />He loves her.<br />He has no idea why.</span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-88273927598842064232015-04-20T19:02:00.001+05:302015-12-21T10:05:13.425+05:30Fear of Writing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I usually have no patience with going back in time and fantasising about what I should have done differently. I rarely read pieces where people write advice to their younger selves.<br /><br />Today I want to give my younger self one permission. Me in my 20s.<br /><br />Write. Write everyday. Express yourself.<br /><br />All kinds of stuff has come right up to my throat...and I won't start typing.<br /><br />I want to tell 20 year old me to write freely all the time, so that the me who is now 40 isn't SO SCARED OF WRITING anymore!!<br /><br />I'm also putting fear out here in the open...so that it discovers what a lovely world there is out here and slinks away.<br /><br />Fear, go away. Don't be silly. You are grown up now. Go travel.</span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-72607347145586657882015-04-03T11:47:00.001+05:302015-04-15T15:09:57.060+05:30Reconciliation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I want to go out today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's a great day. An April day in Delhi when the weather is great. It was raining in the morning. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's Good Friday today. School is shut, the children are home today. I can't work (write, edit, Ochre Sky) when they are at home. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I want to go out. It's a perfect day to go out into the city. I want to wear a saree and go to the National Museum today. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sahar and Aliza are not interested. Their lack of interest is like a dead weight. I cannot lug it around with me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am sad. I am writing to feel lighter. I want to go out. They want to stay at home. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will go out next week when they are at school. I shall be my own child. My own companion.<br /></span><br />
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-37143721546744070992015-03-15T22:23:00.002+05:302015-03-15T22:23:17.485+05:30Five things to learn from the man you love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A lot of times my husband and I look at each other and wonder afresh what a sterling person like him/me is doing with a strange person like me/him. Let me simplify this. I am sterling and he is strange and this is exactly what he believes too. Not that he is strange and I am sterling, he believes the opposite, but if you look at it in a certain way, we both believe exactly the same thing. That the other has got a much better deal than the self.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So we are on the same page most of the time. Except for the very rare times when he thinks about me and feels an overwhelming urge to thank god for his amazing luck. Not god’s luck, his own luck. But this is rare. It is so rare that it rarely happens.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">They used to try to convince us that marriage is something that happens between families, it is not something individuals like the bride and groom are supposed to take too personally. Of course we rebelled, and then we learnt that they weren’t that off the mark either.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In so many ways, we find that most conflicts between us are really about the differences between the boy his parents have raised and the girl my parents have raised.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every time we reach the point where we just can’t believe how the other can be so daft/insensitive/hurtful, all we have to do is back off and remember how different the idea of “everyday normal” is in the families we grew up in. Consciously or not, we feel compelled to recreate the same “normal” in our new family as adults and his normal and my normal look at each other as if the other is really very abnormal indeed.<br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I’m here to admit today that even though my husband, like most husbands, is a well-loved spoilt brat, I have secretly been taking notes all the time and this is my very first list of things that I have learnt from watching him surreptitiously while he thought I was immersed in work or my daily social media duties.<br /><br />1) Learn to fight: In the beginning I used to believe that my role in a conflict was to be the quiet, wise one, the one whose precious tears would roll silently down her pretty face and the one who would be consoled later with hugs and an apology. This idea got me into a lot of trouble with my beloved because he is no good at interpreting silence and the sight of tears sets off all the wrong triggers in him. But, hahaha, now I have caught on to the real fun in a fight. I have learnt from my husband to enter headlong into arguments, raise my voice and say what comes to my mind in long-winded sentences…and stop only when I need to catch my breath. This is fun. And most of the time it works!<br /><br />2) Learn to feel at home: My husband is a vagabond just like me but unlike me, who can feel like an outsider even in my own skin, he seems to find home everywhere. I used to look at him and feel sorry about how deluded he was being till I calmed down and realized that it is okay to calm down. It is okay to belong. Fitting in once in a while really doesn’t hurt at all. Often you get nice things to eat.<br /><br />3) Learn not to be offended: I really don’t know what kind of cauldron this man fell into as a child. Perhaps it is because he spends extraordinarily little time on the Internet, my husband has very little idea about the things one is supposed to be offended or outraged by. He often mistakes insults and offence for genuine interest.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Why don’t you go to Pakistan,” someone will yell at him in the middle of an argument over the last parking spot in the peak of Delhi’s summer.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Of course the person is reacting to the information he has gained from my having addressed my husband by his name, Afzal.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I would gladly go to Pakistan,” Afzal will reply, “but I really want to go to Mohenjo Daro and they never approve my visa for that. Who wants to be stuck in Karachi having late night dinners with relatives, you know what I mean?”<br /><br />4) Learn to be a gracious host: He is always inviting people over and making place for unexpected invaders, I mean guests, without ever worrying about what we will feed them or where they will sleep. When I begin to look like I have been struck by lightning, he will say, “Natasha, they have come to meet us! Stop being silly about food and beds, be good company.”</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over the years, I have finally stopped believing that people drop in to judge me or be served by me. I present mashed spinach and chopped cabbage on the table as happily as he does and when they ask if someone is ill in our family, I smile sweetly at them as Afzal takes over and lectures them on healthy eating habits for their age group.<br /><br />5) Drink tea and do nothing: In the beginning it is very hard. It is very difficult not to participate in urgent global crisis by reading the news and updating one’s Facebook status. It is hard not to do things like sort laundry and re-arrange shoe racks in the house. Then you get better at it.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">There is nothing like having a role model at hand to learn life skills from and if you are as sterling as I am and have fallen in love with a strange person (this is the only way love works, actually), I hope you are using every opportunity you get to beat the strange person at his own game by learning his repertoire of tricks while he is busy drinking tea and doing nothing.</span></span><br /><br /><br /><i><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This was first published in Mint Lounge here:</span></span><br /><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/MnA3B3Xzgkmic70DuaYaAJ/Five-things-to-learn-from-the-man-you-love.html">http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/MnA3B3Xzgkmic70DuaYaAJ/Five-things-to-learn-from-the-man-you-love.html</a></span></i></span></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-79655556461171357482015-01-15T18:00:00.003+05:302015-12-21T10:04:29.934+05:30 Love Jihad : Highly Recommended<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">These days I
call myself a Love Jihadi. It amuses me no end.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My husband was
in the office of the local electricity
supply office a few days ago, trying to inspire the officers to restore the
electricity connection to a factory space he is in charge of.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“We cannot come
in the way of nation-building,” he was saying. “You and I must contribute
towards this collective goal. Restoring electricity to this factory is your
duty towards the nation’s economic growth.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He turned to
look towards me to make sure I was playing my role of important-looking-mediawalla who must not be messed with.
I was distracted. “I’m just a Love Jihadi,” I was thinking in my head, but I
quickly tried to look stern and cross at the same time.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our children are
learning to read Arabic on the weekends these days. They made good progress in the early weeks and then began to look like
their heart wasn’t in it. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Tell them
stories,” I said to their teacher. “They like stories.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last Saturday,
my daughters came to me and began to tell me the story of Prophet Musa and King
Fir’aun. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“The king had a
dream that a baby boy would be born who would grow up and kill him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Just like King
Kansa,” I added, getting excited.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“He ordered
that all newborn boys should be killed. So Musa’s parents put him in a basket
and set him afloat in the Nile river to save his life.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">“Just like
Krishna! I mean like Karna,” I said. <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsaPQukBXYIt520pyOMYSvg_yI6tBT6K1G-NZFEqNvJZ7gmRch_cObh4NGhMSdjpI-mYORlWjGQ6VO5W-PQ4PnHp19H17Ag3nzORSf3qJ8kreGhSHCV_3UvkEnDp0qVAfldA/s1600/IMG_3267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsaPQukBXYIt520pyOMYSvg_yI6tBT6K1G-NZFEqNvJZ7gmRch_cObh4NGhMSdjpI-mYORlWjGQ6VO5W-PQ4PnHp19H17Ag3nzORSf3qJ8kreGhSHCV_3UvkEnDp0qVAfldA/s1600/IMG_3267.JPG" width="400" /></a><br /><br />It was fascinating. After this I behaved
myself and listened to the story quietly. My eyes big like dinner plates.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Afzal and I got
married in 2002. Both of us had witnessed the aftermath of the riots in Gujarat
that year. He had gone to volunteer in the refugee camps after I had returned
from a work assignment.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">My friends, Barkha, Rachna </span><span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">and I had been filming in Vadodara when
some people drove up to us in a Honda City. A young woman, younger than both of
us, came up to us and said she had been looking for us since she had heard that
our team had arrived in Vadodara. She wanted us to visit her home. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It looked like
the Greater Kailash-1 of Vadodara when we
drove into Ayesha’s neighbourhood. Her
home had been set ablaze by rioters. Some parts of the floor were still so
hot that it was not safe for us to enter every room. A charred refrigerator, a
heap of ash where the dining table had been. I remember the shoes I was wearing as I stepped over the rubble filming
the devastation with my video camera. Barkha was talking to Ayesha and some other people in her family. There was a wrought-iron swing in their
lawn. I touched it tentatively. That swing was life. Their life as it had
been. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In November
1984, my brothers and I had gone to the roof of our DDA flat in New Delhi to
witness a mob setting fire to a white corner house in Panchsheel Enclave. The
home had been looted the night before and the Sikh family had fled to safety.
For years I used to peer outside the window of my school bus, staring at the
ruined home every day.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“They won’t
come back,” my brother had explained to me. “They will probably sell this off
for whatever it is worth.”<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our hearts
break and somehow they keep working. Lives are ruined and people get back to
building their homes again. We lose hope and then we find it again. It’s trendy
to be cynical but we are all creating, restoring, healing, trying to put back
broken pieces all the time. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first time
I began to have a conversation with our firstborn about why we were celebrating
Eid even though her school was not, she interrupted me to let me know what she
knew.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I know,
Mamma,” she said. “Prateeksha told me.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“What did she
say?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“She said I am
a Pandit, you are a Muslim.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Excellent,” I
thought. “Good job, Prateeksha.” <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s weird when
you look at it in isolation. We are encouraged to hate. Love is hated. Hate is
loved. If I can hate vocally and violently, I’m in. Love means go and stand
outside the classroom and reflect on what you did wrong. It can get me
expelled.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But Love
Jihadis are sneaky. They are good at love. We
can love you even if you insist on hating us. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After our visit
to the electricity supply office, my
husband took me to the local police station. He needed to file an FIR to report
a missing electricity meter.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I’m a
journalist,” I practised in my head a few times in case I might need to whip
out this sentence to inspire anyone to do the work they were being paid to do
anyway. We must have looked menacing enough because the paperwork got done
smoothly. I stared at a man sitting on his haunches in the corner. His wrists
were tied together with a jute rope that
was then tied to the iron window grill next to him. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I want to go
to the temple,” I said to my husband as we walked out. We walked across the
road from the police station to a swanky new Jain temple.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My
seven-year-old daughter’s words echoed in my head as I crossed the threshold
into the inner sanctum.<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Mamma, can we
go to a temple even if we don’t pray?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(This was first published in Mint Lounge here: <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/74MdYokXsAUTJBLk0yLcvJ/Highly-Recommended-Love-Jihad.html">http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/74MdYokXsAUTJBLk0yLcvJ/Highly-Recommended-Love-Jihad.html</a> )</span></div>
</div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-19627547860041330022014-11-30T21:23:00.002+05:302018-10-19T16:24:32.243+05:30Priya Ramani, the best Editor I could have hoped for<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Priya
Ramani has ruined my life. I’m sure she has done this to many others, but my
story is the only one I know. I can barely remember my life as it was before
she began to send me DMs on Twitter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I
mean it. I used to live behind this nice decent mask and say a few cryptic
things on social media now and then and pretend to be a closet poet or
something and then she said, “Write a column for me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">If
anyone else had asked me to do the same thing, I might have written a column
and become famous and had a fancy collection of shiny new masks to hide behind.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I’m
not sure how or why it happened, but Priya made me bold. For one, she’s always
saying whatever comes to her mind. She barely edits herself. So I also started
saying whatever comes to my mind. And now it is all out there and I don’t know
how to stop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Last week Priya resigned as Editor of Mint Lounge. She has been in this role for 8 years. I don’t know what is going to happen
next. I didn’t ever expect an Editor of a fancy weekend supplement to start
publishing real people’s <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">commonplace feelings</span>, or common people's real feelings; narrated in first person.<br />
<br />
I tested the waters a little in the beginning. For the first few months, every
time I sent a column I expected it to be sent right back to me. For over a
year, I would press send and then be sure that I had pushed the boundary a
little too far this time. To put it more accurately, I would feel that I had
pulled out something from a part of me that was too deep, fragile and vulnerable,
and nobody was fool enough to publish this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Apparently
Priya, you are the fool I was destined to run into. On twitter, of all the
godforsaken places possible. <br />
<br />
And now you are going away. What did you think? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sardar khush hoga? Shabashi dega?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><br />
</i><br />
Of course, khush hoga! </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Because I know why we do
these things. Take decisions to start all over again in the middle of our life.
Smash the chaos in our lives with a hammer and stand back and look at the
smithereens. Tip toe away from the debris.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">I feel like we should go for a stroll in the
park and chat on a bench and then I will write about a friend of mine who
walked away from something she loved because it exhausted her. It was time to
let go. <br />
</span><br />
<span style="background: white;">She wants more of herself for herself. And for
the Very Important People who love her. She wants to sleep in the daytime and be home when her daughter returns from school. She wants to savor her mid-life crisis. These things need time, we know that!</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thank you for inspiring me to drop my masks in
broad daylight. I hope I inspire you to do the same. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be really
easy. Maybe you will continue to take a bath everyday even if you aren’t going
to “go to work.” Maybe you will be more like me. Every time I feel like I
should really get up and take a bath, I update my Facebook status. The less I
comb my hair, the less it falls. Sometimes I comb my eyebrows, when I catch a
glance of me in a mirror.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Priya is going to re-invent herself so
magnificently, you just wait and watch,” I said to a friend on whatsapp today
morning. She was worrying for you. I’m not worrying for you. <br />
<br />
I have hisaab to chukao with you. I’m watching you real close to see if I can
get a chance to send you an idea as ruinous as the one you once sent me on a
Twitter DM. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Priya Ramani!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijXIj5QsSQjlKC5OhuqmSlBBpOn41YDxOxmFfXLxmFxVAKMutJLhoSXBphYfFt1UppOROcTv_i7zG-Ne4N_RQfZT918b4f1JgkTMxz2FQdxatFbpbmRdE7kbNLRn60j7MEdh0/s1600/IMG_6717.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1600" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijXIj5QsSQjlKC5OhuqmSlBBpOn41YDxOxmFfXLxmFxVAKMutJLhoSXBphYfFt1UppOROcTv_i7zG-Ne4N_RQfZT918b4f1JgkTMxz2FQdxatFbpbmRdE7kbNLRn60j7MEdh0/s640/IMG_6717.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Handsome Indian man reading Mint Lounge</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">
<!--EndFragment--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-75034363796697117902014-11-17T10:34:00.000+05:302015-01-16T14:27:58.653+05:30Tell your story as if it matters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG72oUE7jQSM_XCirwQNTV-m48PqBcrB9h3UW-SiqRjcGj_sDteD5HzXn_7n-jJ8bnaMhoyZqQjeJAKxdiJgCObJyyo0-FM12EaTZ40Zyw2-XTgbseJSXNtG3UH4_sn_oSqPk/s1600/Natasha+Sheoes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG72oUE7jQSM_XCirwQNTV-m48PqBcrB9h3UW-SiqRjcGj_sDteD5HzXn_7n-jJ8bnaMhoyZqQjeJAKxdiJgCObJyyo0-FM12EaTZ40Zyw2-XTgbseJSXNtG3UH4_sn_oSqPk/s1600/Natasha+Sheoes.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
<a href="http://sheroes.in/articles/stories-from-the-community-of-entrepreneurship-natasha-badhwar/NTg3">http://sheroes.in/articles/stories-from-the-community-of-entrepreneurship-natasha-badhwar/NTg3</a><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/F1qJ8xzvIsE" width="420"></iframe></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-32505817360480994302014-11-08T21:07:00.001+05:302014-11-08T21:47:04.696+05:30Beautiful and ugly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is my mother's face. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is me speaking at the Sheroes Summit in Delhi this week. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I looked nice in the washroom mirror before I went on stage. I talked myself out of my nervousness the whole day. Just go and tell your story as if every word matters. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFT1_6qV0yh9svN7cazihwPg3CzmIglFLaMhdnP5psHCqj__EgNyhHpeNnrTP4pvZP8kqBFv10cJQPixWWvSfAZwUMk0_NFmc4lawoc6Cd9pGMHc5UJahgeeE-Jjzr4mS0Svo/s640/blogger-image--821919587.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFT1_6qV0yh9svN7cazihwPg3CzmIglFLaMhdnP5psHCqj__EgNyhHpeNnrTP4pvZP8kqBFv10cJQPixWWvSfAZwUMk0_NFmc4lawoc6Cd9pGMHc5UJahgeeE-Jjzr4mS0Svo/s640/blogger-image--821919587.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I feel like I look ugly in this photo. Something has happened to my jaw in the last few years. It ages me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I also used to worry that my mother was ugly when she was my age. I was 10 years old then. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now she is 70. She is beautiful. Maybe I am too. I will learn to see it. </span></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-7848855178257336232014-11-08T20:17:00.003+05:302015-01-16T14:27:35.396+05:30When friends begin to crash<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two people I love deeply are in trouble these days.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of them is talking. Reaching out, making small talk...trying to keep his head above water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other is sinking. I don't know what to do. Maybe he needs to hit rock bottom. Maybe he is at rock bottom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe both of them will recover so well, that years later when I re-read this I won't even be able to remember who was in trouble in November 2014.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">God help us all. Hold him, don't let him go.</span></div>
Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24970557.post-54052018687519510642014-11-07T09:49:00.000+05:302014-11-07T10:47:27.363+05:30Wearing Purple | Ochre Sky<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />I <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">am on a flight at Delhi airport, waiting to take off for Mumbai.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am wearing a purple cotton saree, purple silk jacket, purple bindi and purple chashma.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You might think I am too purple, but my blouse, earrings and sandals are not purple. My petticoat is a satin beige... The one Mum got stitched for me for my wedding reception.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On 4th November, 2014, I spoke at the Sheroes Summit in New Delhi. I spoke about being a media professional with so many different roles over the years and then starting Ochre Sky with Rohit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I spoke about my shame, embarrassment, fears. My ego and my class hang-ups. Speaking with candour is so therapeutic, why don't more of us do it more often?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll tell you more about all this soon. For right now, picture me in purple! There are pink fish and lotuses on the saree palla.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOCMQO5Otd417q79F9PSvjDGgxIEYPc93qU3EC_ISQRidpoL00uJXmuMtTh3xfMTObV0VpbY7ylKwzvWbADtvBQTE2kiWC74UxeEE7YU7EFkswzd-ZPSm-R91AWlt0kaHFzTE/s640/blogger-image-1849612680.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOCMQO5Otd417q79F9PSvjDGgxIEYPc93qU3EC_ISQRidpoL00uJXmuMtTh3xfMTObV0VpbY7ylKwzvWbADtvBQTE2kiWC74UxeEE7YU7EFkswzd-ZPSm-R91AWlt0kaHFzTE/s640/blogger-image-1849612680.jpg" /></span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I used Opera Coast to blog this from my phone, btw. Despite the warning that this browser is unsupported. <span id="goog_1914826397"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I could have used purple perfume too, but I forgot all about it!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgxDt9q76P5t28JjRg_LMxUxCfW5Wru0vHoVZ3EAjBCByubOGDVf7LeI_iBHRi2gTB5vTtJNPwYIO_Lqjc0vQ66e0uhrXhCa8JwJy-HKrsUR3maB3ATpT2J9gbOXQYTz_OKvQ/s640/blogger-image-1507466045.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgxDt9q76P5t28JjRg_LMxUxCfW5Wru0vHoVZ3EAjBCByubOGDVf7LeI_iBHRi2gTB5vTtJNPwYIO_Lqjc0vQ66e0uhrXhCa8JwJy-HKrsUR3maB3ATpT2J9gbOXQYTz_OKvQ/s640/blogger-image-1507466045.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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Natashahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12109767936397491406noreply@blogger.com1